La Paz...site of the most terrifying road on the planet

10-7-08

We took a bus to La Paz the next day. Once again we were slightly nervous about now going to a bigger city to see how "angry" the natives were at their president and how welcoming they would be to tourists. About an hour into our trip we had to stop and pay $1B to take a boat across a channel of Lake Titicaca. We all got into a boat and the bus was loaded into a barge. We looked at this rickety old boat and said there is no way that this boat was going to carry our huge bus across the channel. The boat had a 45 HP motor in it. Somehow it managed to get across, we piled back into the bus and continued on. When we got closer to La Paz we started seeing signs in support of the president, Evo Morales. We took this as a good sign because if you are happy with your president maybe you won´t riot. I mean everybody in the US loves Bush and we don´t riot (sarcasm)(on a side note I have yet to meet a foreigner who wants Mccain to win). The taxi didn´t know where our hostel was so it took a little while before we finally figured out where we were going. We arrived in the hostel called Wild Rover and realized just like Cusco we were outnumbered, this time by Irish people instead of English. We ate dinner at the hostel, played some pool and went to bed.

10-8-08

We woke up and played some more pool while eating breakfast. A balanced breakfast in this country consists of bread, butter, jam and coffee or tea. Very healthy. Anyway back to pool. For the record Jonothan and I are beating Unger and Jason 7 games to 1. Pretty bad especially for how good Unger is supposed to be at pool. Now he says it is because the table is crooked but I say adapt. We left the hostel and walked down the main street. We researched biking down the most dangerous road in the world. Don´t ask me why, but plummeting off a 2000 foot cliff doesn´t sound like fun. Especially when the US embassy is barely functioning in Bolivia so in the odd event you survive the fall, even with the nearest helicopters in Chile and Peru, you probably won´t be getting airlifted out since I´m assuming all of this would have to go through the embassy which as I have just said is not currently fully operational. Well we decided to go anyway. I figure I´ve always wanted to fly. This is probably the closest I will come and who knows, maybe I can reach out and grab a tree or something. We reserved with the best company called Gravity Assist. More on this later...if I live. If not, this will be my last post. We went up to the witches market. Pretty interesting place. You can buy llama fetuses that supposedly people place under the foundation of their homes for good luck. Seems kind of strange to me, but hey, if they think this is lucky who I am to tell them differently. After the market we went and ate Chinese food and then went back to the hostel, watched Zohan, absolutely awful movie and went to bed.

10-9-08

So we heard that in Bolivia they don´t call them empenadas. I read that they call them Saltenas. So of course, pretty standard for us, we went in search of the best saltenas. Now my travel book had a place so we started walking. 30 minutes later we arrived at the spot on the map where the book said to go. Of course, no Saltenas. So we asked a lady where to go. She gave us a spot that was about 20 minutes away from where we were. So we started walking. We then asked somebody else who gave us another place that was totally in the opposite direction of where the lady had said. Now there are Saltena stands everywhere in the city. And they all look exactly the same. So finally we just walked into a restaurant and ordered some. They are baked instead of fried, like empenadas, so that is good. And they have some kind of liquid in them along with the meat. Well they were really good. I ate two thinking we would go in search of another Saltenas place. One the way up the street we stopped an got two donuts each. Then we went to Gravity Assist (the place we would be doing the bike trip from) since the guy in the store told us he knew of the best place to go. He walked us up the street and on the way explained that they have Saltenas and then this other food called Tucumanas. Now we paid the lady our $4B which is about $0.50 and she gave us a fried thing that looked exactly like empenadas. We went over the the table that had about 10 different sauces and started digging in. I bit into my Tucumana and discover the outside is very similar to empenadas, but the inside consists of beef, chicken, hard boiled egg, onion, and more. It tasted incredible. To make a long story short, we went back every day we were in La Paz and had the same incredible experience. And yes I did just write the equivilent of a novel explaining how we went in search of breakfast and then ended up spending the next few hours getting fat. So after that experience we went back to the hostel and started playing cards. About 2-3 hours later we decided we were hungry and ordered a pizza. When the delivery guy game the pizza would not fit through the door so he had to tilt it sideways. It was the biggest pìzza I had ever seen. We did not eat it all in one sitting so I think I´m safe from getting heart disease or having a heart attack. We did finish the pizza before the end of the day though so maybe not. Goodnight, I feel sick.

10-10-08

Today was the day I was sure I would die. The Gravity Assist bus picked us up at 7:30am. We drove 45 minutes to the top of some mountain outside of La Paz. The views were incredible. I figured, hey I get to see all of these mountains around me, it was worth the $85, now lets go back to La Paz. We unloaded the bikes and put on our uniforms. Now some of the other groups that were there had full helmets with facemasks, armpads, kneepads, etc. We were given basically skateboarding helmets. Now our guide explained to us that when you fall 700 meters a facemask, kneepads, elbowpads, etc are not going to help you survive so I felt better knowing that these other groups were not more equipped than we were, they just had the illusion they were. Now for a little background about this road we were voluntarily biking down. The road is 65km which is about 40 miles. You descend 3200 meters which is about 10,000 feet in this time period. The first 22km is on smooth concrete road and you descend about 1700 meters during this section. The next 33km is on this nasty gravel road where at times the road is no more than about 9-10 feet wide. Sounds like fun right? Now our guide explained this road was not just named "the most dangerous road in the world" so that tourist would come ride bikes down the road. This road is actually the most dangerous road in the world. A few years back they proposed building a newer safer road and in order to do that they had to study the current older road and take some statistics. It turns out that in 3 years of study on average 150 people per year died on this road, which is about 1 person every 2-3 days. When we pulled up we saw a sign that said 43 people had died on the road since February (this number probably would be higher, but the new road is now in place so most people take that road). Now if these statistics didn´t scare us off 2 local buses had driven off the cliff 2 days earlier killing 9 people. So yes I know probably at this point I should have just decided not to go. But I had already paid and the choice now was either take the Gravity Bus down the road (not a chance that was happening) or put my life in my own hands and ride the bike. I chose to ride. Now before we could leave we had to participate in a very important local ritual, bless pachamama aka mother earth. In order to do this we had to pour the equivilent of moonshine onto our front tire, pour some on the road and then touch some to our lips. Now our guide told us that while we just touch the alcohol to our lips and did not drink a number of truck drivers tend to take 3 or 4 swigs of this crap while they drive down and up the most dangerous road in the world. As if the road wasn´t going to be challenging enough, now we had to dodge drunk drivers as well. The first section known as the¨"tarmac" was the paved section and we were flying. Our guide said we were probably going about 70-80kph which is about 50mph. We were passing cars and buses. I enjoyed it very much. I didn´t even pay attention to all the crosses lining the road because I was having way to much fun. We then stopped before the gravel road so that our guide could brief us about the safety and tell some stories. I will not go into details about the various people who had gotten off their bike and stepped right off the cliff or who had been riding to fast and just flew right off the cliff. The point our guide was getting at was that if you don´t ride like an idiot you will be fine. So then we were off and it was intense. You had to focus to make sure you didn´t hit any rocks and of course stay on the road because the alternative was sure death. It was an adrenaline pumping couple of hours and I had a great time. We reached the bottom and nobody died. It was a good day. We ate lunch at an animal rescue center that had monkeys, dogs, birds, and other animals. We then took the bus back up the road of death which to me was the most terrifying part of the whole day, but the bus made it up without any problems. To get a small idea of what the road was like here is a youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwAGQ9XZne4

10/11-10/14

The next few days we just basically relaxed. We went to the Bolivia-Peru soccer game which of course we cheered for the home team. Bolivia won 3-0 and we were happy along with the locals. We also went to watch wrestling. It is very similar to WWF wrestling in the sense that it is totally fake and totally bad. The only difference is that men fight women and the crowd is likely to get a person thrown on them or soaked, both of which happened to us. Now the interesting thing is that we got tickets that were considered VIP because they were ringside. I realized after that the locals are too smart to sit any closer. One female wrestler took a beer that belonged to a guy in our group, drank some of it and spit it all over him. It was really gross. 2 minutes later she dumped a two liter bottle of peach juice all over us. Gross as well but at least she didn´t spit it. The next day Jason left to hike Huayna Potosi which is a 6000 meter mountain outside of La Paz. I was going to go but decided not to. I don´t know why I didn´t go, I just didn´t. We decided to wait for him before leaving for the salt flats. We took a night bus to Uyuni the day he got back. Now I know the next thing I´m going to talk about it getting repetitive but this is how I lived it so this is how I´m going to present it. We went to the bus station the day before we were set to leave. There are only two bus companies that go to Uyuni direct. We went to one and asked the lady all the questions. She said it was a new bus, with seats that folded down almost flat. We looked at here and said "do you promise this is our bus", and she said "yes, it is very comfortable, with a bathroom, etc." So we were happy because had a promise and the two ladies seemed very nice and would not lie to us. We arrived the next day, showed up at the window and the same two ladies told us that bus was not coming. It was another bus that was older and did not have a bathroom. We were not happy but not surprised. We got some money back from her and waited for the bus that arrived about an hour late. It was crap and I didn´t not sleep that well since 90% of Bolivia´s roads are not paved and this happened to be the case with this road. Next stop Uyuni.